Dead Man's Love

by Tom Gallon

But that didn't happen. I reached the ground in safety and crouched there, waiting; there was still the outer wall to scale. In that I was less fortunate, for although in the grey light I made the circuit of it inside twice over, I failed to discover anything by which I could mount. But at last I came upon a shed that was used for storing the oakum, picked and unpicked; it had a heavy padlock on the wooden door, and the roof of the shed inclined at an angle against the high wall. It was my only chance, and there was but one way to do it.

I stepped back a few paces, and took a running leap for the edge of the roof, jumping for the padlock. I tried three times, and the third time I got my foot upon the padlock, and caught the gutter with my hands. Exerting all my strength, I drew myself up until I lay flat upon the shelving roof of the shed, scrambled up that, and stood upright against the outer wall, with the topmost stones about a foot above the reach of my hands.

That was the most ticklish work of all, because the first time I tried to make a jump for the top of the wall I slipped, and nearly rolled off the sloping roof altogether. The second time I was more successful, and I got my fingers firmly hitched on to the top of the wall. I hung there for a moment, fully expecting that I should have to let go; but I heard a shout—or thought I heard one—from the direction of the prison, and that urged me on as nothing else could have done. I drew myself up until I lay flat on the top of the wall, and then I rolled over into freedom.

Incidentally in my hurry I rolled over on to a particularly hard road, without much care how I fell. I picked myself up and looked about me, and began for the first time to realise my desperate situation. What earthly chance was there for me, clad as I was in convict garb, in a wild country place, at something after four o'clock in the morning? I was branded before all men; I was a pariah, to be captured by hook or by crook; the hand of the meanest thing I might meet would legitimately be against me.

But then I was only five-and-twenty, and the coming day had in it a promise of sweetness and of beauty—and I was free! Even while I cast about in my mind to know what I should do, I know that I rejoiced in my strength and in my young manhood; I know that I could have grappled almost gleefully with any adverse fate that might have risen up against me. But I recognised that the first thing to do would be to make for cover of some kind, until I could make shift to get a change of clothing, or to decide after my hurried flight what the next move was to be.

After going some little way I dropped down into a ditch, and looked back at the prison. It stood up grim and silent against the morning sky, and there was now no sign of any disturbance about it. Evidently for the present I had not been missed; only later would come a mustering of the prisoners, and my number would be called, and there would be no answer. That gave me time, but not time enough. I determined to make my way across country as quickly as I could before the world was astir, and so put as great a distance as possible between myself and the prison.

But by the time I had run a few miles, and could see in the near distance the roofs of cottages, I began to realise that in the country people have a bad habit of rising at a most unearthly hour. It was but little after five o'clock, and yet already smoke was coming from cottage chimneys; more than once I had a narrow squeak of it, in coming almost face to face with some labourer trudging early to his work in the fields. Daylight was not my time, it was evident; I must wait for the friendly darkness, even though I waited hungry.

The record of a great part of that day is easily set down. I lay perdu in a little wood, where, by raising my head, I could see out on to the broad highway that was presently in some indefinite fashion to set me on the greater road for freedom. All day long the sun blazed down on that road, and all day long from my hiding-place I watched vehicles and pedestrians passing to and fro; I had much time for thought. Once some little children toddled down hand-in-hand into the wood, and began to pick flowers near where I lay hidden; that was the first sight of anything beautiful I had had for a good long time, as you shall presently understand. Despite the danger to myself, if they should have seen me and raised any alarm, I was sorry enough when they toddled away again.

There was so much to be thought about, as I lay there on my face, plucking at the cool green grasses, and drinking in the beauty of the wood. For I was but five-and-twenty, and yet had never known really what life was like. I had been shut away all my days in a prison, almost as grim and as bad as that from which I had this day escaped; and I had left it for that greater prison where they branded men and set them to toil like beasts.

My earliest recollections had been of my uncle—Zabdiel Blowfield. I seemed to have a vision of him when I was very, very small, and when I lay quaking in a big bed in a horrible great room, bending over me, and flaring a candle at me, as though with the amiable intention of starting my night's rest well with a personal nightmare. Uncle Zabdiel had brought me up. It seems that I was left on his hands when I was a mere child; I easily developed and degenerated into his slave. At the age of fourteen I knew no more of the world than a baby of fourteen months, and what smattering of education I had had was pressed then into my uncle's service; I became his clerk.